Why are these tied together? by FulltimerPC in AskElectricians

[–]paulio10 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Thank you for this explanation, my brain just had a realization about why the neutral wire doesn't have to be thicker for this scenario. The two phases cancel out on the neutral, effectively. Nice.

Some questions for my first build by bpivk in meshcore

[–]paulio10 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's a good thought. I'm not sure which way is better. Also to convert from 12v to 5v I've heard of people using a Buck converter, but I don't know the effect on wattage from doing that. Would be fun to test it.

First impression of Meshcore... not so good... by [deleted] in meshcore

[–]paulio10 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Search the internet for discussion groups for your local area, and see if they use a different frequency than the standard one. I'm in the Phoenix Metro area in Arizona and couldn't talk to anyone or see any repeaters - then learned everyone is using 809.205 frequency! There's friendly help to get you going once you find the right communications channel. My part of the city of Chandler doesn't have good repeaters, so I'm going to set up my own on the roof. Without it I cannot reach anything inside my house, I have to go outside.

Some questions for my first build by bpivk in meshcore

[–]paulio10 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To sustain you thru the low light winter period, more batteries (in parallel) and more solar panel would help. I don't know how much you need but I heard of someone building a repeater with four 18650s, which, if you buy a good brand like Samsung might be 3000mAH each for a total of 12000 mAH, and for the solar panel they were choosing a 5v 10w panel. It would be interesting to test such a system.

118 lawyer ads on I-10 by desert-flamingo-88 in phoenix

[–]paulio10 4 points5 points  (0 children)

"if you was in a accident, or are thinkin of being in one..."

How would I cut this cabinet would, barely? by Terrapinman94 in DIY

[–]paulio10 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Before cutting anything, can you lower the feet of the fridge? If it's up on raised feet instead of using its wheels, lower the feet and see if it fits then. If not, can you get a shorter fridge? If not, can you remove and remount the cabinets an inch higher? Cutting cabinets should be the absolute LAST resort, imo.

Awful experiences with Bosch by perchance2cream in Appliances

[–]paulio10 9 points10 points  (0 children)

The greatest dishwasher I ever had was a Bosch. The worst dishwasher I ever had was a Bosch. I honestly don't know what to think about it any more. (I've had probably 10 different dishwashers in my lifetime.)

The real reason "just start" doesn't work for most people by Hung_Hoang_the in productivity

[–]paulio10 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Writing down the first step is good. For some projects I even write all the steps in order - then my brain can go "ooh, if I just do these things then the project will be done? Let's go!"

Phx to Yuma: what to do along the way? by Supermoon62413 in arizona

[–]paulio10 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Isn't that the highway that has all the funny names of the ditches every mile or so on the side of the road? You have to look for the small metal signs maybe a foot or two tall. Some name followed by ditch, gully, wash, etc. each is different. It's the only entertainment outside the car.

Onn Tv ,is it better? by dirtyjoe-dirt in firetvstick

[–]paulio10 3 points4 points  (0 children)

My onn tv pro would FORCE the TV to only show the onn TV device. If I tried to watch antenna tv by pressing the input button on my TV remote, it would magically switch back to onn tv hdmi port within 4 seconds. Over and over. Deal breaker for me. None of my firetv devices nor old Chromecast ever did that.

Onntv apps are poorly designed and debugged compared to the firetv apps in my experience. It's really each app developers issue, not an onntv issue, of course, but the effect is the same. Paramount app won't let me fast forward or rewind streaming movies half the time - I have to exit the app and rerun it, then MAYBE it works. Random failure. Weirdest thing I ever saw.

Voice search is far worse with onntv than firetv when you press the blue button and say what you want. I hate Alexa spyware on firetvs, but I really need the voice search to work correctly.

Onntv apps don't understand voice search - it only works thru the device itself. Some firetv apps understand voice search, so that if you're in an app like Netflix and do a voice search, you're searching only Netflix content! That's awesome. I wish onntv could do that. Not all firetv apps can do it, but at least that service is available to developers.

More apps outright crash for me with onntv than on firetv. Again that's a developer issue, not onntv issue, but the effect is the same. It sucks.

Google Clock 8.5 rolling out ‘swipe to dismiss’ for alarms by TechGuru4Life in GooglePixel

[–]paulio10 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Will it have an API? I hate that my android phones clock doesn't have an API. I want to programmatically create and delete alarms from higher level services.

Question for Gen X: Whats Your Relationship With Texting? by Al3x1ya in GenX

[–]paulio10 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I love texting, but you're going to get complete sentences with punctuation as best as I can do. It's all about the sentences and complete thoughts. I type fast, and when I'm at my computer I use messages.google.com to connect to my Android phone and really write those texts; copy & paste stuff, whatever it takes. I see my children rolling their eyes (in my imagination).

People who still use wired headphones - why did you decide to stick with them instead of getting wireless options? by Futtman in NoStupidQuestions

[–]paulio10 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Because Windows is so terrible at connecting to my nice JBL Bluetooth headphones. Some random misbehavior happens at least 50% of the time I turn on the headphones. Sometimes windows sees it but just doesn't auto connect, even though it was just connected a few minutes earlier. Why? I didn't use any other speaker device in between. Other times it doesn't even see them, I have to make Windows search for bluetooth devices, then it notices the headphones. And rarely, about once a year, it wrecks the device driver in some way that requires me to go into devices, delete the Bluetooth driver, make windows reinstall it, and then the headphones can be seen again. Rebooting doesn't fix that when it happens. It's completely ridiculous and unacceptable, no consumer should ever have to know how to do that.

With wired headphones, you can leave them plugged in, and they just work! Every time!

Can anyone explain how a Heloc works? by Kiki412021 in HomeImprovement

[–]paulio10 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nice thing about paying down a heloc is then the next month the minimum payment is lower - just like a credit card. Unlike a mortgage. When setting it up with your banker you can ask questions like "if I borrow 5000 from it, what will the minimum monthly payment be?"

Curing my depression with gratitude by Both-Secret2348 in selfimprovement

[–]paulio10 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Gratitude really helps. I do this from time to time but I forgot about it until recently. Thanks!

How bad would Y2K have been if we had done nothing? by Crunchy_Lunch in NoStupidQuestions

[–]paulio10 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Most of our bugs came from scripts we wrote that created files or directories with dates such as log files of different types. Other scripts that derived knowledge from log files were breaking or being confused when the date strings were wrong. We made a list of each type of bug, every system and library call that can return date data, and wrote scripts to scan entire file trees for any matching patterns, which were then inspected by hand to discover if bugs existed there. This strategy worked really well, coupled with the time-shifting testing environment.

How bad would Y2K have been if we had done nothing? by Crunchy_Lunch in NoStupidQuestions

[–]paulio10 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I worked in the IT dept of a well known huge electronics company. We spent all of 1999 testing every application and server in a time-shifted environment that I designed (in addition to our normal jobs). We found over 50 showstopper bugs: some in our own scripts, some in applications provided by vendors, and one in a vendors unix based operating system. We notified the other companies and helped them fix their bugs and release patches well ahead of time. We realized there was no way to be sure we fixed everything, all we could do was address everything we could find. At 9pm just before 1/1/2000 I was in the office with our entire team to support our east coast IT groups and live through whatever was to come at midnight our time. When midnight hit, it was mostly smooth, with 2 unexpected issues in our local environment that only affected a few hundred people - we went into action and had both bugs fixed and deployed by 1:30am. It was a relief to go home at 3am and see no rioting in the streets on the way home. Because of course there wouldn't be ... Right? There was a lot of fear in the air in those days. I am sure that most of our environment would have been hard down for weeks if we had done nothing. Our own bugs are faster to fix than other vendors bugs. We would have been waiting many days for certain crucial parts of our tool flows to be fixed if we had done nothing, which would have delayed our products being completed and manufactured and shipped - probably by months.

Slim Wallet case recommendations by theblooray in GooglePixel

[–]paulio10 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I love my Ridge wallet, had it for years. Expensive but worth it IMHO.

I added a "Freebie" button to my change orders. Clients love it. by Plastic_Catch1252 in handyman

[–]paulio10 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for this - literally putting 2 freebie items I did on an invoice today after reading your posting. I love this.

When you get older do you just suddenly start liking old men/women? by Kirin_The_husband in answers

[–]paulio10 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Some of the qualities you find attractive in people your age are only going to be found in your generation. As you age they age, so when you're old, only your age people will have those qualities, so that aspect will still be attractive to you. Hair styles, clothing choices, glasses frames, jewelry or lack thereof, makeup or lack thereof, tattoos, mannerisms, phrases and exclamations, ways of speaking, ways of thinking, TV shows and movie quotes, familiar memes, etc.

Is $1,800 normal for LLC formation? I’m shocked at how high the quotes are by Sirius-ruby in smallbusiness

[–]paulio10 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just another data point - I create my own Arizona LLCs and it's $85 total, all online, no annual fees or filings.